Month: February 2016

(Shreveport, LA)  So, you’re wondering: What are George & Elaine doing in Shreveport?

Answer:  I have made a resolution to keep our old Lexomobile until the eventual arrival of “self-driving” cars.

We will also cover the world’s most convoluted accounting problem, too…but in due course.  It’s going to take a bit of explaining.

There is a piece from a while back (maybe a year?  One loses track of time at this stage of life) about how such machines will change the way we live.  By the time the analysis was done, it was almost too good to be true.  The only part that is not-so-good is the price.

Still, consider what it’s going to be like to have a car which…

• Will find its own damn gas station with the cheapest price.
• Will wash itself when it needs to be cleaned.
• Will schedule and keep its own maintenance appointments
• Will potentially END any concerns about drunk driving.
• Will allow you to completely relax and watch the scenery go by…
• And, in the twin bed version of the driverless, you can actually nap, snooze, or sleep all the way across the country on trips. 

To be sure, the media has taken a kind of delish delight in reporting the occasional mishaps that the driverless Googmobiles and others have run into.

Still, it smack of an “anti-future media” and what I mean by this is we have (as a country) lost some of our native ability in American to (language alert) make really cool shit.  Sure, some things like the silicon dolly voice come out of Cupertino, and elsewhere.  But the minute it hits production levels that make sense for the American market “Poof!!”  The manufacturing goes offshore and the money (in Apple’s case) that piles up from huge success hangs offshore too.  No point paying taxes on it, I suppose.

Since we may only buy one more vehicle in our lifetime (assuming someone doesn’t offer me a trade for the old airplane that involves a 911 or Cayman), we sometimes have to leave Palestine, Texas and venture out into the noisy world in order to get certain things done.  For reasons that should be apparent to any free-market economist, the largest Lexus dealership in the world is not in Anderson County, although there’s a good Toyota dealership.

The new dealership in town can’t make a Lexus key.  Lexus here in Shreveport can do so, but only barely.

Lexuses (Lexi?) from the mid 2000’s had one weak spot in their key design.  The plastic that should protect everything has a weakness right where the key stem attaches to the plastic body holding the electronics.  For all we know, there may be a ham sandwich or bag of cat food inside there, too.

Anyway, ours broke on the last long road trip and Elaine didn’t like my idea of repairs.  It involved an assortment of Duco Cement, Super Glue, model airplane cement, and electrical tape.  T’wasn’t pretty, but it did the job.  Until last month.

I ordered a replacement key online – I thought with the push-buttons, but no,  I got the valet key instead.  It will do everything the “special key” will do…it’s just you can’t do it from across the street.

Naturally, the valet key from online needed to be cut and “programmed.”  Which was done for $50-something.  But the dealership didn’t have our old-style key in stock.

After a turn around the dance floor trying to figure out how to solve this, we noticed a display for something called an “Eternity Key.”  Basically, it lets the dealership take the old electronics and key stem and put it into this new “military grade plastic” housing. $117 and change.

Don’t even ask what a military grade of plastic is.  In my short exposure to product design, we just used glass-reinforced injectable goo and it worked fine.  I suppose a stronger binder and a different ratio of glass filling has been assigned a “MIL-STD” but the display either didn’t mention which standard, or I was too dumb to find it.  Regardless, no one in the waiting area was able to inform us on point, either.

After going through the chairs a while longer in the waiting room (1-hour 10 minutes and by now 4 pm) everything was done.  We had two keys that worked and look good. As opposed to a blank part  and one gob of goo with push-buttons when we walked in.

Cost of the repair?  A shade over $187.  But with a “special” key, you really don’t have too much choice.

Read More

A fiery cup at the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a mighty “Where goes Silver?” echoes across my front yard as the Sun tries to figure out where Texas is.

This may sound a bit melodramatic, but it mat have been the highlight of the day.

You see, Japan was up 2%, the Shanghai was down almost as much, and this morning the mumbletards of Eurabia are down over one percent.

That doesn’t bode well for ‘Merica , formerly a land of borders and common sense.

The Dow will open down a hundred and something and oil has been kicked back under $33 for West Texas and EU oil is down too.

In fact, if there’s anything good in this morning’s review of the futures, the price of copper (a fine little indicator of war jitters because countries are reloaders, too) is back down.  So all the crap over the weekend about South China this, and new islands that is just filler between Iowa stories.

Say, Ted…

-Not to get off onto a side track so early in our morning cuppa, but did you see this Times of Israel note?  “Now deeply Christian, Cruz’s fervor once wasn’t so obvious.”

And there’s this headline, too: Bible prominent in final Cruz pitches to voters.

So here’s the thing:  I get that Ted is trying to work…I mean appeal to…the religious right.

I must be a little off, though, because Ure’s truly was under the impression that America held to the separation of Church and State.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t have any problem with Ted being a Believer and all, BUT when politics and religion mix, its something to keep an eye on. 

Seems to me the only difference between Christians and Muslims getting mixed into politics is which book they reference. 

I’m sure the Texas senator has done the calculus on this, but  beyond a certain point, there may be more moderates to be gained than Born Agains.  Something to ponder, although it’s really too late.

I just go looking for where the church and state have merged and I come up with places like, oh, you know:  Tehran.

Admittedly, on the other side, a large portion of America’s younger voters have no clue what “core values” are…but can we keep ‘em in separate buildings?

Our Lady of Teflon

Meantime, that 22-emails from the Clinton private server have been deemed too classified to be made public.

No worries for the Teflon Lady, though.  A former Inspector General says there will be no indictment.

You and I are not above the law, you see.  But there are “somes that is”…and it’s what keeps America a bad joke in more mentally-honest countries.

I’m trying to work time into my schedule to write a book which might have a title along the lines of:  Masters or Organization:  Gotti and Clinton.  You compare organizational geniuses you want, I’ll pick my own.

Side bets on a low-level bit of collateral damage will be all she wrote?

Personal Incomes and More Fairytales

Just out:  Personal Income and Expenditures….a nearly incomprehensibly discontinuous report where the math never works out.  Here:  Hot off the press release:

“Personal income increased $42.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $37.8 billion, or 0.3 percent, in December, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $0.7 billion, or less than 0.1 percent. In November, personal income increased $44.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, DPI increased $33.4 billion, or 0.2 percent, and PCE increased $59.4 billion, or 0.5 percent, based on revised estimates.

Read More

Being a (semi) retired management & software “slinger” it’s fun every so-often to see if one “still has it.”

So there we were, Sunday morning, coffee on the deck… and we hear noise at the local gravel crushing site down the road from us.

Crap!  It was supposed to be closed by now.

Here I was, thinking I would not really have to go through with my promise to run for County Commissioner if nothing was done to improve the state of local roads.

So far, nothing has changed but I was cool with “letting the clock run.”  Until Sunday morning at a quarter to 8 when heavy equipment noises including the obnoxious back-up beepers started going, again.

What to do?

Well, off to the web services provider.  Bought a website domain name and the cheapest possible hosting plan I could find.  $27 and change for the whole thing. First month of hosting included and $8 a month thereafter.  Works for me.

From there, it was a matter of…

1. Installing the publishing framework.
2. Writing some content
3. Going out and taking some road pictures
4. Adding the pictures to the website  (which meant optimizing and various  monkey-motion)
5. Finishing the optimizing process  (Ure, the speed-tuner)

The result of 5-hours of “Ure-time” may be seen over at www.fixandersonroads.org. 

Not like the local powers (that want to) be aren’t in the dark about what’s going on here.  In fact, I sent a nice email to the County Judge advising him (and the editor of the local paper) of my intentions to get serious on the campaign. 

None of which matters a bit to anyone outside of Anderson County, Texas, except it explains why everyone hereabouts drives a pick-up truck:  It’s slightly faster than driving a Caterpillar D-6 into town, although that’s really a better choice, until you get up to the noisiest piece of road ever driven, which is the local Farm to Market road.  Abbreviated in Texas as an “FM” road, as opposed to a County Road which goes as a “CR.”

But there is one little item that slapped me in the face yesterday as I was screaming through content-generation.  In the tradition of Barrack Hussein O, let me quote from myself here:

“The Ure Vision

Pronounced “Your Vision”

1. Money should be spent based on numbers of users.  Busy roads should get more, quieter roads should get less.  Businesses that damage roads (overweight trucks) should be required to post a damage bond.  The County should allocate funds on condition and traffic counts.  Ever see a traffic counter in Anderson County? I’ve been looking for one for 12-years now!

   Read More